Letter to the editor: Liberty

June 30, 2008 may be remembered in history as the day Americans began, in earnest, the moral and solemn process of holding their (servant) government accountable to the Constitution. That happened under threat of withdrawal of allegiance, support and tax money. To secure this end, the people have begun to claim and exercise a little-known, but unalienable, "Right of Redress," rather than depending upon the will of the majority as defined by precinct voters, those who cast votes on Capitol Hill, and those that vote from the inner sanctums of our courthouses.

Most do not know that this profound natural right, first articulated 800 years ago in the Magna Carta, is embodied and protected by the petition clause of the First Amendment; the same amendment which protects your voice in the defense of freedom.

Very importantly, academic research since 1986 makes clear the Right to Petition for Redress is not a redundant statement of the Right of Speech. It is in fact, the individual exercise of popular sovereignty.

To be sure, the widespread exercise of this right holds significant implications for our nation and are most worthy of your interest. Here's what the founders sitting as the first Congress had to say.

"If money is wanted by rulers who have in any manner oppressed the people, they may retain it until their grievances are redressed, and thus peaceably procure relief, without trusting to despised petitions or disturbing the public tranquility." (Journals of the Continental Congress, 1:105-113).

On June 30, 2008, approximately 1,200 American citizens began the process of exercising the right by formally serving a legal notice and demand for redress upon the president, the attorney general and every member of the United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate at their local, district offices. Demanding an official response within 40 days, the notice includes seven petitions for redress of grievances regarding substantial violations of the Constitution. Those are the Iraq invasion in violation of the war powers clauses, the Federal Reserve System's violation of the money clauses, the U.S.A. Patriot Act violation of the privacy clauses, the direct, unapportioned taxes on labor in violation of the tax clauses, the federal gun control laws in violation of the Second Amendment, the failure to enforce immigration laws and the construction, by stealth, of a "North American Union" without constitutional authority.

We the people cannot elect our way out of tyranny. Any assertion that by electing either McCain or Obama we can cure the ills that now plague America is simply naive or based on a lack of information regarding the corrupting forces that truly influence and control our government and political process. Our Republic faces a watershed moment no less historically compelling or newsworthy than the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. If liberty is to survive through peaceful means, citizens and the press must embrace their obligations, both moral and Constitutional - to bring this critical information into view.